-- an ongoing experiment in online dialogue meeting design

A series of eight experimental, face-to-face meetings have been held at various
locations over the past decade -- partially inspired by an earlier
version of the criteria indicated below. This has evoked the question as
to whether an online version is possible and what form it might usefully take.
Only one of these dialogues has been tentatively described in a document (Anthony Blake, A Self-Organizing Group in Dialogue, 1994).
Several have been captured in "visual minutes" by Tim Casswell (Reduced version of colour flipcharts as PDFs: Wales, 1993 session, 9mb; Scotland, 1994 session, 6mb). Such records are contested as
unrepresentative by participants. (See also an earlier variant of this document)

Context

There are many creative experiments with dialogue at this time, whether
online or otherwise

Valid questions are raised concerning the fruitfulness of verbal interaction

Framing a possibility for new dialogue

There is a healthy concern that not enough is being learnt from past
initiatives and, whilst many new initiatives are being explored, there
is a frustrating sense that these may not be focusing on less tangible
underlying issues and processes. A checklist of possible concerns might
include:

Exploring learnings evoked by endeavouring to respond to challenging times

Moving beyond issues that are symptomatic of poorly explored tensions

Avoiding issues for which there are well-established dialogue arenas

Avoiding distraction by well-explored communication patterns

Exploring ways of moving beyond the deficiencies of online dialogues

Emphasizing perspectives sensitive to new paradigms and old wisdom

Recognizing frameworks offering solutions, without buying into them

Challenging the dialogue process and experimenting with new approaches

Emphasizing insight and avoiding information overload

Focus and purpose

The focus and purpose of the dialogue is, to a large degree, the nature
of "focus" and "purpose" in a dialogue amongst people with strong
commitments, extensive experience, and a weariness with old patterns and
efforts at facilitation towards consensus. The dialogue will tend to question
easy framings such as this text. In a real sense the direction favoured
by each participant will be considered, or experienced, as tangential to
what will remain an undefined purpose. Such tangents will tend to be valued
as intersecting baselines from which a common purpose may be inferred --
by some -- but not captured in words.

Participants

Potential participants will tend to be busy individuals, experienced
in group process, with strong views and commitments -- and a wide range
of interests. The need of each to "do" and to "accomplish" something through
any encounter (especially where there are strong preferences on meeting
organization) introduces a special tension in an agenda-less, leader-less
situation where each is co-responsible and none wish any particular view
to dominate.

There is no particular process or mode of facilitation. Most participants
are only convinced of the merits of such a gathering by word-of-mouth discussion
with others whose views or qualities they respect.

The decision on whether it is appropriate to participate can therefore
really only be made intuitively. There are absolutely no guarantees on
the value of the experience, the composition of the gathering, or the scope
of the exchanges.

The urgencies have not gone away either, so the indulgence of participation
will continue to be challenged.

The challenge is to describe the online dialogue in ways which will
encourage some to participate and will discourage others for whom there
are many more appropriate online contexts. Part of the challenge lies in
reflecting on the design to ensure that it offers new opportunities --
whether or not these are implemented.

Online advantages

There are well-recognized advantages of online interaction over face-to-face
encounters. These include:

Ability of participants to take time to reflect about communication content

Reduced impact of verbosity

Opportunity for participation by distant participants with travel constraints

There are of course well-recognized limitations where valued body language,
personality and other factors do not communicate well.

Experimental message policy

The challenge is to overcome the well-recognized constraints of listservers,
newsgroups and e-mail in general -- especially overload. Key factors are
brevity, variety, focus and dynamics -- however these may be usefully interpreted.
It is expected that the message policy will be treated as experimental
and subject to continuing redesign. Features that may possibly be
included are:

Combination of e-mail and web facilities, with e-mail being used to point
to longer communications on the web (whether specific to the dialogue or
posted elsewhere)

Encouragement of participants to develop their own message filter rules

Use of a multi-site technique, switching some messages to alternative sites

Use of visuals (image, audio, or video)

Spam control

Issue, rather than personal, orientation of messages

Pattern building

Outcomes

It is expected that participation would provide its own justifications
-- which would be variously defined. Outcomes might include compilation
into book form, preserving anonymity, although the website might serve
this need.

Why participate?

If you feel an often desperate sense of urgency in endeavouring to discover
new frameworks of response to the many tragic world issues

If you believe that meetings can be a useful learning laboratory in which
risks need to be taken if they are to produce anything of wider relevance
to social transformation

If you are interested in the exploration of co-created meetings

If you are weary of conventional pre-structured events and presentations
and the low level of expectations that they encourage

If you want to test your ability to respond spontaneously to new meeting
possibilities

If you recognize the need to hold dilemmas and paradoxes without resolving
or by-passing them

If you question the wider social impact of the resolutions, declarations,
pledges and plans that are laboriously negotiated as the main product of
conventional international gatherings

If you are intrigued by the possibilities of collective self-transcendence

If you are prepared to accept that all participants, including yourself,
are as much a part of the problem as a key contributor to the solution

If you believe that you are prepared to question your most fundamental
assumptions

If you believe that you learn and grow through being challenged by radically
different views

If you consider that much of value remains to be discovered from larger
group experiments in self-organization

If you are weary of intellectual frameworks and fashionable models and
are intrigued by the possibility that new metaphors are required to navigate
the strategic challenges of the future

If you are intrigued by possible breakthroughs from collective concentration
of attention in the moment

If you believe that participants should be collectively responsible for
the fruitfulness of an evolving meeting process

If you enjoy surprises and the unexpected

Why avoid participating?

If you feel that the prevailing style of meeting is adequate to the challenges
of the times

If you consider a pre-defined agenda essential to any meeting

If you consider a well-defined purpose essential for any effective gathering

If you believe that clearly defined leaders and presenters are essential
to successful meetings

If you are sceptical of the possibility of relying on the skills of other
mature meeting participants to take responsibility for correcting any unproductive
imbalance in the meeting process

If you prefer well-defined and appropriately facilitated meeting processes

If your principal need is to present your own project or to convince others
of the overriding merits of your perspective, paradigm or process

If you need an audience for your views and are impatient with time spent
on integrating the views of others

If you are convinced that the remedy for present challenges lies in responding
concretely in a specific area such as: employment, pollution, alienation,
conflict, discrimination

If you are convinced that a particular belief system, or set of values,
holds the key to a more appropriate response to the dilemmas of the times

If you are especially status conscious and have difficulty in recognizing
the contributions of others with different qualifications or cultural backgrounds

If you are unwilling to restrain yourself from presenting proven insights
and skills that seem a vital contribution to the evolution of the meeting
process

If you are unwilling to be constrained by the reluctance of others to accept
any imposition of your insights or processes (that they may perceive as
a subtle play for power by you)

If you expect the meeting to produce a well-defined product

If you consider that the tension between polarities can, and should, be
resolved or avoided

If you consider acknowledgement of individual or collective "shadows" to
be unfruitful

If you believe that deeply felt differences should be de- emphasized in
favour of whatever participants hold in common

If you are not prepared to waste time on experiments that may fail

If you regularly indulge in group process experiments as a pleasurable
hobby